


Redesign

by wastefulreverie



Series: PhannieMay Shots 2019 [10]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, post-reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 14:03:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastefulreverie/pseuds/wastefulreverie
Summary: It hasn't been long since the reveal and the last thing Danny wants to do is have a chat with his Dad.





	Redesign

"Hey son, you got a minute?" Jack asked. The large man was seated at the end of the kitchen table, surrounded by half-broken gadgets, various screwdrivers, and Maddie's crisp new iPad. Jack seemed to have little regard to the fragility of the tablet and was switching between tampering with the wiring on his latest ghost detector device and typing in notes. "I've - uh, been meaning to talk you about this."

At his Dad's voice, Danny cringed. He had almost done it, escaped confrontation today; but his attempts were made futile as Jack heralded him over. Things had been tense since the reveal last week, and even though Jazz was encouraging communication, Danny was still fighting nail and tooth to avoid talking to his parents about Phantom.

He turned from where he had been _about_ to flee up the stairs and trudged back into the kitchen. "What is it, Dad?" he asked with false flippancy. He was reluctant to take a seat beside Jack and stood a good foot away from the table. Even six days after Jack learned that Danny was a ghost, he was back to invention more ghost technology - Danny knew that it was Jack's coping mechanism, but it did little to reassure him that Jack understood how uncomfortable some of his inventions made him.

"Take a seat," Jack gestured, motioning with his left hand and continuing to tinker with his right. "I've had a few ideas that I think you'd like to hear about."

 _Uh oh_. Ideas were never good. Especially from someone who was waving around dysfunctional ghost technology.

Danny took a seat beside Jack and carefully eyed a hunk of tech that had been torn open so that its wires spilled outwards onto the table like guts. Jack stayed ignorant to Danny's discomfort and hummed to himself as he finished whatever adjustment he was making to the invention in his hand. With a sloppy flourish, Jack set the invention back on the table next to the others.

"So… what ideas?" Danny found it hard to keep his voice steady, but managed to do so.

"Oh, just some little things!" Jack said. He jerked his arm out and patted Danny's shoulder. Danny fought the itching urge to go intangible - to get out of this man's (his _Dad's_ ) grip - and only managed to stay corporeal by digging his fingers into the tablecloth. "Stuff to help you with your ghost fighting. Some, er - redesigns to help you with your public image!"

His blood ran cold. "Dad, I don't really know if I feel like talking abou-"

"Here! Look at this!" Jack enthusiastically slid Maddie's iPad in front of Danny. On the screen there was one of those outdated 'one does not simply…' memes. Danny was compelled to roll his eyes but resisted making a witty remark on Jack's behalf.

"Funny," Danny's voice dripped with lackluster mirth. Danny hoped that Jack would pick up on his tone and realize that he wasn't in the mood for this.

Swiftly, Jack glanced between Danny and the screen and laughed. "Oh, sorry! That's the wrong picture. I saw that on the Facebook a while ago and saved it!" He took back the iPad, swiping through the camera roll until he found the correct picture. " _This_ is what I wanted to show you!"

It was a sketch from one of those generic drawing apps. Jack wasn't the worst artist, certainly not the best, but the drawing was clear enough that Danny could tell what it actually depicted (which was much better than any of Jazz's art, but he never said that).

The drawing was of a slim ghost hunter in an orange HAZMAT suit and white boots. Like his parents' suits, the figure had a hood with red goggles that obscured his face. Clipped to his belt there was a Fenton Thermos and one of his parents' more recognizable ectogun prototypes. Danny had to zoom in on the picture, but drawn on the figure's chest was… _his_ symbol.

Danny noted with revulsion that Jack had drawn a picture of Phantom but had taken away every indication (save his logo) that the person in his drawing was supposed to be him. Jack had thought of some 'redesigns' to help his public image, but from what Danny could see, he had stripped away everything that made Phantom look like a ghost. Jack had hidden Phantom's hair and eyes under a hood, given him brighter colors, and provided him with a human ghost hunting weapon instead. In short, Jack had basically drawn his ideal _human_ ghost hunter and given it Phantom's symbol.

Because Jack still wanted Danny - Phantom - to be human, not a ghost.

That… was a lot to unpack. Danny wasn't sure how he should react. He was too afraid to directly address what Jack was hinting at - he'd rather stretch out this ignorance between him and his parents. Because Danny wasn't ready to face their honesty, for them to tell him how much they disliked his ghostly nature.

"What do you think?" Jack asked. "It's just something that I've been playing with. I haven't even shown your Mom yet, I wanted to gauge your opinion first."

"I uh… don't know how I feel about it?" Danny started with a white lie. "I don't know, it just doesn't feel like _me_."

"Yeah…" Jack conceded, "it is a bit different from what you currently had, but everything I changed I did so with good reason!"

Danny sighed. Even though he was scared, he should just speak his mind. "I'm not sure. To me it just feels like you're trying to humanize Phantom too much. Phantom isn't… I'm not… supposed to be human?" The look on Jack's face was unclear, so Danny quickly clarified, "I mean, that's sort of my gimmick? That I'm the good ghost that fights the bad ghosts?"

"I wasn't even thinking of it like that," Jack chuckled. "I was just making changes on what seemed like the most practical to me. I hid your face to hide your identity better, gave you an extra gun for protection, and well… the color change was more self-indulgent than anything. That, and I think Jazz's color psychology thing said that bright colors are more trustworthy! That's what I meant by the public image thing - everybody likes the trustworthy hero, right?"

Danny gulped, "So you didn't make me look like a human ghost hunter because you don't like my… uh, ghostliness?"

"Wha- no! Of course not, Danno. That never came to mind, I'm sorry if I made you feel like that. These past few days… I've just been doing my best to wrap my mind around it. I just figured… that I'd just… ahh, forget it," he cut himself off.

"That you'd just what?" Danny probed. He hadn't expected such solemness from his Dad. His _ghost hunting_ Dad.

"Well, it's not every day you find out your son is an _actual_ superhero. I just wanted to give the whole design thing a shot. Speaking of, I've been meaning to ask how you got that logo onto your suit. I know that the suit is from the accident, but you said that you can't really change outfits, right?"

Danny laughed nervously, "Well… it's kind of a long story." He gave him a vague summary of the events that happened when he lost his memories and Sam recreated the accident.

"Wow!" Jack whistled. "You sure have had a lot of adventures in these past few years, haven't you?"

"It feels like a lot, yeah," Danny agreed.

"I wish I'd known sooner…" Jack lamented, "that way I would've been able to fight at your side! Keep my boy safe from all those ghosts!"

Danny scoffed, "Pft, _you_ called _me_ the superhero. You still think I'm the one that needs saving?"

Dad ruffled his hair playfully, "If you need saving from anything it's from all those worried thoughts you have. I love you the way you are, you know that, right?"

"I do," Danny replied, "I just don't think that it had sunken in until now, though…."

"Well, I'm glad we moved past that then!" Dad declared. "If you feel like it, you and I can come up with a new design for your costume together? I know you like what you have, but trust me, I have plenty of ideas that we can use to make your job lots easier!"

"You know what?" Danny grinned, "I may just take you up on that offer."


End file.
